I have been a little MIA in the last month because we had a forest fire, it was kind of scary, I won't lie. I have never had to evacuate my home before, and we had about an hours' notice to evacuate our house. With that little notice you really realize what is truley important in a crisis. Fortunately, we had our important documents all in the same place, and it was a matter of tossing in medicine and passports. Oh, and John hadn't come home from work yet, so I was doing all of this alone, and as organized as I am- I really almost forgot about the cat... but don't tell her because she already likes John better.

We made it through, and thankfully everyone and everything was safe. But in the wake of our evacuation I realized that we are woefully ill-prepared for other types of emergencies. We had no water/food stores, and didn't even own a proper flashlight that wasn't attached to our phones, until last week. (Don't worry if you search "emergency preparedness" on Pinterest you'll find everything you need from a weekend with no power, to straight-up "hide yo kids hide yo wife" status emergencies.) So in addition to my other emergency prep, I wanted to make some emergency candles- but I wanted them to look good. I had empty teacups just sitting in the cupboard and they needed a purpose in life. So that's how this DIY was born. I would estimate that these will burn for close to 40 hours each.

Supplies:

Scissors

Teacups

Soy Candle Wax

Flat Braid Wicks (at least 3" longer than your container)

Microwave Safe Container/ Double Boiler

Hot Glue/ Wax Adhesive

Directions:

1. Clean your cup and dry completely

2. Place your wick in the center of your cup and glue it down with hot glue. You can also use wax adhesive for this step. Support your wick with a pencil/skewer/etc.

3. Heat wax according to package instructions. This is where you will add dye or scent if you choose to. I added a few drops of lemon and orange scent.

4. Pour into container. You can adjust the wick to make sure it is straight after you poor the wax.

5. Let sit until the wax is cool until the candle is solid. (If you have an uneven settling you can add more wax to the top to make it a level surface.)